In lieu of Michfest Week

Exploring the Value of Women-Only Space by Kya Ogyn

 from the article...

 There is a male pattern of violence towards womyn which is well documented. It is a common, every day occurrence in every country in the world. While it is true that not all men are violent, it is also true that almost all violent acts are done by men. It is also true that this level of violence could not exist without the tacit consent of all men. Even men who are not violent benefit from womyn's fear because most womyn have learned to be wary of angering them. At Michigan Festival and other womyn-only space I have learned what it is like to live without that fear and I want that for all womyn all the time. I think it is difficult to create a new way of living if one has not experienced at least a taste of it, and womyn-only space provides that taste.

In general womyn have been trained to center our lives around men. Male supremacy means that whenever all other class rankings are the same between womyn and men, men will be considered superior. Girls grow into womyn with the experience of being automatically subordinate to men of similar circumstances. While boys grow into men knowing they are privileged in relationship to some men and subordinated to others, they experience being properly superior to girls and womyn. This reality influences every moment of each individual's life. Womyn-only space allows womyn to experience living without that deeply trained deference to men. Womyn only space is something like a science experiment.

A foundation of heteropatriarchy is the male right of access to womyn. Historically, men have sometimes accepted that some womyn are off limits because they belong to other men, but only rarely have womyn claimed the right to exclude all men. While males have reserved to themselves the right to gather in male only spaces they have used rape, physical assault, pornography and economic dependency in a pattern of insistence on access to womyn. As Marilyn Frye wrote in The Politics of Reality, "It is always the privilege of the master to enter the slave's hut. The slave who decides to exclude the master from her hut is declaring herself not a slave."  

Humans are born, with very few exceptions, female or male, and trained by societies into femininity and masculinity. While there are cultural variations in how these sex roles are expressed, in general certain constellations of characteristics are seen as masculine and certain others as feminine. In almost all societies masculinized males are considered to be properly dominant over feminized females. I think dominance is central to the concept and practice of masculinity as submission is to femininity....some Mtf's have said that although they were born with male bodies they feel like women. They believe there has been a mistake and sex reassignment surgery is a reasonable way to redress that mistake. I think it probable that when anyone, male or female, says they "feel" like a womon or a man they are actually saying that what they feel corresponds with feminine or masculine sex roles. I think the world and all individuals are better served by the elimination of masculinity and femininity than by the surgical and chemical mutilation of healthy bodies in an attempt to conform to them. Feminism's response to those who find their assigned sex roles limiting or just a bad fit is that all human characteristics are properly available to all individuals regardless of physical sex.

Womyn only space is time and place where the welfare of the class of womyn and its core constituents, females who were raised as girls and perceive themselves as womyn, are the primary concern. In this space the desires of others are secondary. If even one womon's perception of safety from male violence is diminished by the presence of individuals who are or were or claim to be members of the class of men, those individuals should be excluded. If any womyn find it easier to try new things or to explore their lives without the presence of non-womyn, that should be allowed. 

 dirt

Dear Trans Community-An Open Letter from Dirt

I write this for various reasons all of which will be covered. I'll start with the most obvious first, this is a PERSONAL blog NOT an open forum. While you are certainly free to comment what you like, there is no guarantee I will publish your comments. I do generally publish what I consider reasonable comments even if I do not agree with them, but don't be surprised if I do not respond back to you. The general ignorant, hate filled, threat of violence, misogynistic, Femmephobic, Butchphobic, Lezbophobic types of comments and comments where the author is completely clueless about Femme/Butch/Lesbian and Gay history? They haven't a chance in hell of being published, in other words, you're wasting your precious little time typing them up. That may seem unfair, but again PERSONAL BLOG, NOT OPEN FORUM. But, you might twist my arm into allowing all comments, if and when I am unbanned from the multitude of  "butch/femme", "queer", "trans", "ftM" and "Mtf" sites and forums and a level of truth and dissent/debate allowed, till then, the song remains the same.

Next, this blog clearly isnt for the drowned, meaning those who've either transitioned or those so far under the waves all hope is lost. This blog with relation to trans, is for those still on the beaches, men and women who with a little understanding and empathy can and will and have been reached. It is also a place where Femme lesbians and Butch lesbians alike can finally see honest images and representations of themselves and their (our) lives honestly portrayed. Where Butch Shame is written about rather than swept away in some dark filthy corner, where BUTCH femininity is acknowledge, where Butch breasts are beautiful and embraced, where Butch pussy tastes like heaven, where Femme invisibility is acknowledged, where Femme fierceness is admired and brave, where Femmes can read and voice their deep sorrows about how Butch Shame affects their lives, their angers about Butch Shame as well and a place where Femme and Butches together are allowed to enjoy their bodies to the fullest without being accused of being "straight" or accused of being "less than" Butch. Where loving, exploring and embracing the females we were born and women we are in the face of patriarchy is a BRAVE feat no man or no straw(man) has ever or will ever know. So you dear Trans community can dispense with those comments about how "brave" trans(men) are, there has never been anything brave about conformity. Sergei Esenin upon slitting his wrists and writing his last poem in blood said: Goodbye my friend/no hand clasped/no word spoken/do not let me/vex or sadden you/In this life/there is nothing/new in dying/and in truth/to live is nothing new. After hearing about Esenin's death Mayakovsky wrote a poem in response to Esenin's last and said that the difficult thing to do is live, not bow out in some cowardly fashion. Oh and spare me the born-in-the-wrong-body bullshit, because we both know thats exactly what that is, crap. Given you have attached yourself to the Gay and Lesbian movement, you might wanna bone up on your Whitman.

Lets see what else? Ah yes, "community"! The plethora of comments from you and your apologists regarding how dare I post truths about the trans community, how dare I use your own words and images to illustrate those truths when I am one of your "own", a member of your community! Well I'm here to tell ya, I am NOT one of your "own" and I certainly am NOT in YOUR community (although the reverse cant be said, now can it)! Despite the rising numbers of young women/lesbians who've fallen prey to the trans trend, the dominating numbers of post transition remains straight (white) men. Straight white men, are NOT my, a BUTCH LESBIAN'S community! The gay men who transition because of their pathological internalized homophobia? No, not my community either. The lesbian females who transition, a high percentage of which testosterone alters their lesbian sexuality to that of heterosexuality by way of sex with gay men? Nope, females whether they pass as male or not who screw/partner with men are NOT my community. The lesbian females who transition partnering with screwed up straight women (straight women co-opting and colonizing Femme/lesbians identities and spaces) who are then defaulting to "straight" (thats up for debate-can we say Craigs list)? Umm no, again, heteroville isnt MY community and those bored-I-wanna-be-different-cuz-different-is-fun-and-exciting when your are a bored and not so exciting teeny bopper types who are jumping onto the trans trend? Again, little straight girls chasing gay men? NOT MY community.

If a single one of you bothered to know, whether you understood it or not, an iota about Butch history and Butch women, you would know we have no community! We may not be islands, but we certainly are often alone. We may have a few Butch friends, but Butch Shame and the hardships faced daily from society continues with gusts and gales keeping us from one another in large numbers. And feel free not to believe me, but ask any REAL Femme lesbian and she'll attest. This is another issue Femmes have with Butches. But none the less, that aside, however you dress up patriarchy it will NEVER be a place I (a Butch lesbian) will find home or community! So do not EVER attribute your trans-patriarchal-wannabe-gender-normed community to me!

Lastly, I think the dirt-is-a-closet-ftM bullshit is WAY past old at this point. Comments or accusations such as those only strengthen everything written on this blog. Because in all your gender conformist minds it SCARES the fuck of each and every single one of you. Because if a woman like me, a woman who looks, moves, feels the way I do is comfortable with her body, comfortable letting a lover touch her body, embraces her body, a body that outside of my own little space is read as male by society every day. If I can live and breath and love being EXACTLY who and what I am (a Butch woman), that speaks DIRECTLY to that voice in your heads, the voice that you have tried to quell with every shot of "T" and every cosmetic surgery you've had, that woman's voice, your true authentic voice. That is why you are all here with regularity, not because I'm providing "misinformation" or because I'm some "crazy transphobe", but because that voice recognizes herself with every post I make and despite all your efforts she still whispers in your ear "you've made a terrible MISTAKE". So in future take your wrath out on her, she's the one you are really angry with, the one you struggle to silence when you are trying to silence me. 

dirt

"The Emperor's New Gender" by Alix Dobkin

A decade old article but speaks to today more than ever...full article here

I hadn't thought about that old story for many years until Elana Dykewomon told me of a similar experience at a reading only weeks ago of San Francisco Jewish Lesbian writers.  When she spoke the name of her new poem (Butch resisting the pressure to change gender) a group of transgendered individuals and their supporters got to their feet and left the theater.  Had they stayed they might have learned what this award winning writer and long time survivor of Lesbian community struggles (since before some of them were born) had to say, proving that closed minds are not limited to anti-Semites.
Experiences such as these and others have prompted this extensive preface to my (next) column on transgender, particularly FTM (female to male).  I am well aware of how volatile an issue it is in our community and how personal it can feel.
Jim Fouratt, long time activist, writer, independent thinker and faery has lately taken quite the trashing for his forthright critique of Genderpac's  "ruthless and aggressive attack in the gay and lesbian community based on gender bias..."  Jim and I agree that, "once again men are defining who and what women are."

"FTM" means women, usually young, who undergo hormone injections, sometimes breast reduction ("top") surgery in their pursuit of "maleness."  Reservations about this procedure, when voiced at all, are frequently answered with hostility and charges of "discrimination," discouraging even further candid exploration of the "transgender" vogue and it's meteoric rise to the top of the "queer" order.

When at the end of a butch/FTM panel I asked how constructed "males" felt about the lifelong commitment to the medical establishment and their utter dependence on doctors and drug companies for their identities, the only response was a noticeable chill in the room.  If I was FTM I wouldn't want to think about that either.

Everywhere at the conference young FTM's defied gender roles and "performed" "masculinities."  But say, isn't  "masculine" a construct preserving male rule?  And isn't being/creating our own individual version of a woman what lesbians have always been about?  So why would a Lesbian embodying infinite female potential ever think she needs to be - or actually could be(a biological impossibility) - a man?  Impatience for male power and privilege combined with monumental lack of faith in the future of women could explain it.  But "woman" is much bigger and expansive than a stunted masculinist vision of female possibility.

Can you conceive a population more exquisitely groomed to "change gender" than the generation informed by deconstructionist Queer Studies?  In the blur of "Gender," represented as little more than a "social construct," injustice might easily be confused with inconvenience.  To girls confronting their powerlessness, scant attention paid to "gender's" political roots and historic consequences leaves "masculinities" looking good, and personal adjustment through technology even better.  Hey, why not jump at the chance to escape "gender distress" - the universal female condition forever afflicting "the second sex"?  How instantly gratifying, how perfectly consumer friendly.  This postmodern all-American quick fix comes complete with academic sanction.

In today's "LGBT" hierarchy the last may indeed be first, but beneath the surface of lock-step acceptance lies an unspoken universe of discomfort.  Doubts and qualms fill the closets of newly silent Lesbians and gay men now afraid of being labeled "bigoted."  Rather than injure feelings or appear oppressive toward a sexual minority, many remain silent, unwilling to deviate "...from the politically correct gender rhetoric (which) subjects one to being called and dismissed as transphobic," as long time gay activist and independent thinker, Jim Fouratt, writes.


Alix Dobkin was on the cusp of whats become a trans trend or as I've heard other lesbians calling ftM now, the Flavor of The Month club. Too bad more lesbians werent listening ten years ago, a lot of lives could have been spared from the butcher's cleaver. Luckily more and more lesbians today are paying attention and are lending our voices to each others and finally having the shear courage to say....NO!


dirt

Casual sexism is nothing but misogyny

You can spot a woman-hater by the language they use

Hags, dogs, whores, bitches. It's amazing how much hate you can pack into a few syllables. How do you spot a woman-hater? By the way they talk about women, treat women, react to women, represent women. Bitching about women, slagging off women – even the language used to describe such slander comes from misogyny. The ubiquitous verbal violence supports physical violence and nobody, male or female, minds. If I were called a Paki in the street, I would have some hope of it being taken seriously. If I were called a slag – as I was last summer by a man on a bicycle, in Stepney – nobody would consider it report-worthy.
Misogyny is such a strong substance that women have absorbed and internalized it. 

For men and women alike, casual misogyny is the climate and context of all their interactions. It is unconcealed and automatic. It affects the way women are received, portrayed and considered as colleagues, friends, workers, mothers, artists, thinkers, public figures and victims of male violence and discrimination. Apart from outright slander, jibes, names and insults there is: talking down a woman's work, interrupting her, teasing her, mocking her, talking over her, patronizing her, sighing or rolling one's eyes when she talks, invading her personal space. The misogynists' approach to women can be summed up thus: sneer, leer, exploit, ignore.

There is a final, huge, virtually universal form of casual sexism which is expressed in nearly every house. Any man who thinks it's OK to live in a household where the woman does the overwhelming majority of all the housework, childcare and family admin is a woman-hater. If he weren't, it would agonise him to live in such an unequal and exploitative setup.
So, what to do about casual sexism? Don't perpetrate it yourself, call it when you see it and fight any man defending his misogyny or any woman defending her false consciousness.

With every post made here I fight in some way against women holding onto or perpetuating their "false consciousness", you should do the same.


dirt

The Top Ten Signs you might be Butch, butch persuasioned or some form of tomboy

1) You felt like a "boy" as a child.

2) You disliked "girl" clothes, "girl" toys and "girl" things in general.

3) You had a preference for "boy" clothes, "boy" toys and "boy" things in general.

4) You felt wrong (shameful) having to use the "girls" bathroom at school.

5) When playing pretend games you often (always) imagined yourself in the "boy's" roles.

6) Your preferred playmates were often (always) boys.

7) When puberty began you felt depressed because you felt as though your body had betrayed you.

8) You wanted to die or disappear the first times you had to (buy) wear a bra.

9) Even if athletic, you felt a sense of physical weakness (inferiority) because your body wasn't changing the way males of similar ages around you were.

10) As a teenager you felt more and more alienated from your body until you began feeling a mind/body split.

dirt